Unicorns Are Real!

Maybe unicorns aren’t wholly mythological: a one-horned deer has been spotted in a nature reserve near Florence, Italy. And it’s not merely a case of having one weird antler off to one side; it’s a horn poking straight out of its forehead.

"This is fantasy becoming reality," said Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center for Natural Sciences in Prato, to the Associated Press.

Tozzi believes it’s a genetic anomaly, and suggests that historical accounts of unicorns were based on similar creatures. (Some deer have also been observed with three antlers — but rather than being symbols of all that humanity holds rare and special, they’re just freaky, and Boone and Crockett won’t even score them.)

Of course, Tozzi and others appear to have discarded out of hand the possibility that this single-horned creature isn’t a year-old roe deer, but a real unicorn. Unless they’ve sent a virgin out to pat it, how can really they be sure?

Note: On a related note, the quest to assemble ultra-high-resolution digital images of the seven magnificent tapestries known as "The Hunt of the Unicorn" inspired this magnificent New Yorker article by Richard Preston. In addition to unicorns, it’s got Gregory and David Chudnovsky, the Russian math genius brothers whose home supercomputer inspired Darren Aronofsky’s π. Hit it.